The site
of Chalcedon is located on a small peninsula on the north coast of
the Sea of
Marmara, near the mouth of the Bosphorus. A stream, called the Chalcis or Chalcedon
in antiquity and now known as the Kurbağalıdere, flows into
Fenerbahçe bay. There Greek colonists from Megara in Attica founded the
settlement of Chalcedon in 685 BC, some seventeen years before
Byzantium.

Prehistory

The mound of Fikirtepe has yielded remains dating to the Chalcolithic period (5500-3500 BC) and attest to
a continuous settlement since prehistoric times. Phoenicians were active traders in this area.

Pliny states that Chalcedon was first named Procerastis, a name
which may be derived from a point of land near it: then it was
named Colpusa, from the form of the harbour probably; and finally
Caecorum Oppidum, or the town of the blind.

Megarian colony

Small silver jug from Chalcedon.

It was a
Megarian colony founded on a site that was viewed at the
time as so obviously inferior to that which was within view on the
opposite shore, that the Persian general Megabazus is said to have remarked that
Chalcedon's founders must have been blind. Indeed, Strabo
and Pliny relate that the oracle of Apollo had told the Athenians
and Megarians who founded Byzantium to build their city opposite to
the blind, and that the story was interpreted to mean Chalcedon,
the 'City of the Blind'.

Chalcedon, however, was a flourishing town in which trade thrived.
It contained many temples, including one of Apollo, which had an oracle. Chalcedonia, the
territory dependent upon Chalcedon, stretched up the Anatolian bank
of the Bosphorus at least as far as the temple of Zeus Urius, now the site of Yoros Castle, and may have included the north bank of the Bay of
Astacus which extends towards
Nicomedia.Important villages in Chalcedonia included
Chrysopolis (the modern Üsküdar) and
Panteicheion (Pendik).
Strabo notes that "a little above the sea" in Chalcedonia, there
lies "the fountain Azaritia, which contains small
crocodiles."

In its
early history it shared the fortunes of Byzantium, was taken by the
satrapOtanes,
vacillated long between the Lacedaemonian and the Athenian interests.Darius' bridge of boats, built in 512 BC
for the Scythian campaign, extended from Chalcedonia to Thrace.

Funerary stele from the 1st century BC.

Chalcedon was included within the kingdom of Bithynia, whose king
Nicomedes willed Bithynia to the Romans
upon his death in 74 BC.

Roman city

The city was partly destroyed by Mithridates. The governor of
Bithynia, Cotta, had fled to Chalcedon for safety along with
thousands of other Romans. Three thousand of them were killed,
sixty ships captured, and four ships destroyed in Mithridates'
assault on the city.

During the Empire, Chalcedon recovered, and was given the status of
a free city. It fell under the repeated attacks of the barbarian hordes who crossed over after having
ravaged Byzantium, including some referred to as Scythians who
attacked during the reign of Valerian and Gallienus in the mid 3rd century.

Byzantine and Ottoman suburb

Chalcedon
suffered somewhat from its proximity to the new imperial capital at
Constantinople.First the Byzantines and later the Ottoman Turks used it as a quarry for building
materials for Constantinople's monumental structures. Chalcedon also fell
repeatedly to armies attacking Constantinople from the east.

Bishopric

The Metropolitan of Chalcedon holds senior rank (currently third
position) within the Greek Orthodox patriarchal synod of
Constantinople. The incumbent is Metropolitan Athanasios Papas. The
cathedral is that of St. Euphemia.

The last appointment to the Latin titular
see of the Roman Catholic
Church dates to 1967. Two seventeenth century titular bishops
of Chalcedon were responsible for the Catholic Church in England
(and Wales): William Bishop (1623-24) and Richard Smith (1624-32).
The Armenian Catholic titular see has been suppressed. Its last
occupant as also that of the Syrian Catholic titular see dates to
the 1950s.